Tennessee Basketball Teams Will Play on Portable Wooden Floor

A $40,000 portable wooden floor will be installed at Stokely Athletic Center for the Tennessee Volunteers’ last basketball season there.

Don DeVoe, who coaches the Vols men’s squad, and Pat Head Summitt, who coaches Tennessee’s women, both welcomed the switch from the Tartan surface, which the Vols have used since the mid-1960s.

“The women’s team had expressed more interest in the floor than we had,” said DeVoe. “We haven’t had many injuries on it but the women have injured themselves quite often in the past two years.”

Last season two women players, Lisa Webb and Val Freeman, had to undergo ligament surgery as a result of injuries.

UT’s new 25,000-seat arena also will have a portable wooden floor, UT officials say. Tennessee hopes to be in the new arena for the 1986-87 season.

John Parker, director of the university’s physical plant, said the low-bidder for the wooden floor was Horner Flooring Co.’s “Pro-King” model. Horner Flooring, of Dollar Bay, Mich., supplied portable basketball floors for the 1984 Olympic Games, Parker said.

Horner won the bid over Robbins Floor Co. of Cincinnati, whose “Cincinnati All-Star” floor model is used by most colleges and professional teams, Parker said.

He said the bid would have to be approved by UT officials before it was awarded, but that the OK was a “99.9% certainty.”

AP-FX-06-12-85 2212PDT